


actant

by midcirclenine



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Arc Reactor, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-11
Updated: 2016-02-11
Packaged: 2018-05-19 19:51:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5979106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/midcirclenine/pseuds/midcirclenine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And little voices you're definitely ignoring are saying that three pounds are better than the fifty you woke up with, or the spare few ounces you could have had for a few days, but these voices are annoying and being ignored and are being reasonable and you don't think it's that much of a stretch to say you don't really have to be reasonable about suddenly being full of metal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	actant

You're suddenly about three pounds heavier, which really isn't that much when you think about it, but you don't like to think about things like that. You only justify things that you want to do – if it's a negative you dwell on it or ignore it, and this isn't something that can be ignored. Weight has a gravitas to it. (Which is a dumb phrase that says nothing and just sounds intelligent. It's like saying something has a certain je nes sais quoi. It literally doesn't mean anything. Any understanding is purely semantic.) And little voices you're definitely ignoring are saying that three pounds are better than the fifty you woke up with, or the spare few ounces you could have had for a few days, but these voices are annoying and being ignored and are being reasonable and you don't think it's that much of a stretch to say you don't really have to be reasonable about suddenly being full of metal. Particularly when you weren't that reasonable to begin with. For somebody so inclined towards all things mechanical and mathematics, you're surprisingly erratic, and it probably drives people crazy.

Good. It's better that way. People are more interesting when they're on edge. Or inversely when they're completely relaxed. It's all that shit in between that's irritating.

Three pounds doesn't seem like a lot, but in terms of the human body, it's pretty fucking goddamn important. The average human brain – which yours isn't. Average. Some might say human, but then again, you've done a pretty good job proving exactly how human you are, time and time again – is usually three pounds. Three very important pounds. The heart is just shy of a pound when you're young but gets bigger with age, so by the time you pass on, with an average of three broken hearts per person, you work out that the heart's about three pounds as well. (This is worked out on a night you don't really remember that well: just the conclusion you came to.) A healthy human liver is about three pounds, and yours is also very important. One of the most hardworking organs in your body, aside from your brain. Three pounds in the human body is a big step. Three new pounds in a place they weren't before? That's an entirely new kind of step. The kind of new kind of step that's there when you don't expect it to be and makes you stumble a little and look like an idiot because hey, dumbass, there was nothing there except the floor.

Three new pounds in your chest. Your chest is in a different shape now. Sort of. The arc reactor is sitting where a part of your sternum used to be – actually where about half your sternum used to be, and as a result, most of the muscles in your chest don't connect the same way they did before. You've grown accustomed to it now, although every now and then when you're not paying attention you forget that you have to breathe differently now than you did for the first thirty-odd years of your life and it all catches up with you in a rush of chemicals you wish you were less familiar with.

It makes sense that you would breathe differently though, considering how much of a new leaf you're turning over, how far into the fire you had to wade to actually come out moulting and molten into your very own gilt phoenix metaphor. It's a rebirth in more ways than the obvious, down to the core - literally, what with the heart being the seat of the soul and yours finally showing how weak and porous it had been all along.

So if breath is life and the heart is the soul then movement becomes the actions, and you move differently too (both in motion and at rest, because lying on your stomach presses on that one nerve and fucks with your heart rate and makes you want to gag a little, and lying on your back makes those three pounds feel like five and then six, and then seven and it's just hard to breathe and you don't really need that while you're sleeping because those particular nightmares don't need any more fuel than they already have) and the actions you take and give have dramatically shifted as well.

And sometimes you feel your heart skip a beat, and when it rains all the scar tissue aches like nothing else you've ever felt, and hiccups are suddenly the most painful torment in the world because there's nowhere for your diaphragm to expand to and it slams against the underside of the RT casing every time, and because your lungs can't fully expand you're more susceptible to chest colds and pneumonia, and sometimes you get a little light-headed for no reason, and you put your weakness on display in battle because fuck you, it's not a weakness, it's a strength and it's part of you now, although you hate getting hit in the chest because you never know what havoc that's going to create internally (both in the suit and in you personally) and life is just a whole lot more complicated and worth it than it was before.

Funny too, that you had to break your heart in order to finally give it to someone. You handed her the pieces of yourself you'd patched up with sandy duct tape and she agreed to help take care of it and maybe find something a little bit stronger to keep this mess together in the meantime.

Three pounds doesn't seem like a lot, but it's changed everything.

**Author's Note:**

> I know the writing is p clunky in a few places, but most of that is intentional, as the syntax is supposed to mimic rambling thoughts. I mean, I'm not gonna claim _all_ of it is intentional, but. The majority of it should have been, at least.


End file.
